Faxing and emailing

[moram]

I have used Goldmine "lightly" for a few years. I would like to set up the email and faxing capabilities, but need some answers prior to beginning.
1. Do I use unique email addresses (besides the users current address) in Goldmine?
2. Does faxing require the fax software be on the PC that houses the database, or on each PC?
3. I have read almost every posting in the Goldmine newsgroups, and have seen mostly "monster stories" regarding emailing. Many posts describe lost emails, or problems with attachments. Please fill me in. If it ain't broken, play with it till it breaks.

 

[RobColborne]

Hi

The beauty of GoldMine for using it as a email client is that emails automatically link to Contact records giving you valuable contact history that can be called upon at anytime in the future. Generally I find reliability with emails to be sound, I would recommend that you use the latest version of the program, at least version 5.x as the email client has been inmproved drastically from version 4.x.

If you plan to use GoldMine for mass-emailing then you need to schedule suitable times for the sending. Sending an email to 1000 contacts with a 1Mb file attachment would obvioulsy have an impact of your network! GoldMine is very good for this as defining templates is straightforward.

GoldMine uses POP3 / SMTP server for email, this can have configuration issues with Exchange. Basically SMTP relaying needs to be enabled for the successful sending of emails.

GoldMine is designed as a workgroup tool and therefore supports the sharing of information and attachments get stored in one central directory.

In answer to your questions:

1. You do not have to have a unique email address it is purely a busines decision. If you want to monitor response from an email shot then it can be useful. Especially, if you need to remove recipients from future emails shots.

2. Mass faxing is dying as method of marketing. However if you want to use GoldMine for broadcast faxing then I would recommend FaxRush / OmniRush from

http://www.zfirm.com.

This will integrate with GoldMine to provide an excellent faxing solution.

Hope this helps! Robert Colborne

http://www.prior-analytics.com

Experts in GoldMine

 

[moram]

Hey Robcolborne, that was sure a quick response (10 minutes) for a forum with so few members. Your information was great, more than you get from tech support for sure.
I am really trying to get away with using WinFax, and sharing a phone line among three users. We are not going to be broadcast faxing all that much.
Any comments are greatly appreciated. If it ain't broken, play with it till it breaks.

 

[Guest_imported]

I just got done implementing WinFax Pro v10.2 on a Windows 2000 Server platform with 30 Windows 2000 Pro clients. We worked through ZetaFax v7 and FaxWorks prior to getting to WinFax as we simply did not get WinFax enough credit. It really is the best bang for the buck for a smaller operation. Our enviorment is a Goldmine FrontOffice and BusinessWorks Gold solution. WinFax works like a charm, and the best part about it is that it works with GM's MS Word merging functionality. Needless to say the only hitches I have found are:

1.Sending single page faxes is a little bit of an issue (ie: cover page only). This is due to the way the merge function works. In order to send directly from the GM shell you have to merge something even if it is a blank document (which is what I have done). That is because WinFax is pre-setup with standard coverpages. My users then just delete the blank page prior to sending once in WinFax.

2. Dialing strings are terrible if you have to use something out of the ordinary. Also anytime you switch settings on the Winfax server you have to resteart the WinFax service. This breaks all the client connections and you have to either inform the users to close the WinFax monitor and restart it, or script a remote close and restart via redirected AT commands for each PC. This is the worst of it.

3. MAKE SURE you get a decent Fax (class 1 and 3 complaint) modem. I am favoring the USR External Sportsters. External being key as you can reset the modem without having to reset the PC. The manuals will say TAPI is important, but it really is a funky standard and I usally end up going COM based on the modems. Otherwise you end up with a ton of hung calls do to the voice modem attempting to interpert the call. Oh by the way you may want to look at two modems and two lines. Due to the simplicity of the solution faxing became more prevelent. Well we ended up not recieving a lot of faxes initally as the line was busy. So having one line dedictated out and one in really helped out.

4. Automatic routing of recived faxes is a real pain as you have to program each customer to a sales exec or department. Needless to say we are not using this feature.

5. Reporting to the user is bad. Meaning getting a report for each user just doesn't exist. So we had to generate this report via Goldmine itself. Oh by the way one of the best features is that your GM customer profiles are updated each time you use the fax/word merging function. Really a nice perk.

Finally the one mistake I made was not having a network ready APF scanner from the start. The auto page feeding on the scanner really helps out on multi-page documents which are not generated from your systems and the network aspect is great so you are not having to dedicate a machine.

So there you have the disertation... Good luck.

-Victor
OPSTECH Consulting
Las Vegas, NV

 

[dgillz]

Victor,

Goldmine has some limited custom reporting capabilites and there is always my favorite, Crystal Reports. If I can help you with that let me know.

Software Support for Macola, Crystal Reports and Goldmine
dgillz@juno.com

 

[Guest_imported]

To prevent spamming via open relaying in exchange it is necessary to close the door and disable smtp relaying. Doing this but enabling it to only accept relaying from certain IP addresses e.g. the Goldmine server or a goldmine client, still gives the 550 relaying prohibited message. Is there a correct way around this because you can't leave your SMTP relaying open to the world !

Cheers

David